More Images

Preservation of Brevard hotel is a labor of love

Tim Hall toils for more than 20 years to restore historic Aethelwold

The historic Aethelwold building in Brevard is owned by Tim and Nancy Hall, who are in the process of restoring the former hotel.

Mike Dirks / Times-News

By Geraldine DinkinsTimes-News Correspondent

Published: Sunday, May 4, 2014 at 4:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 6:08 p.m.

BREVARD -- When Brevard business owner Tim Hall stands in front of the Aethelwold Hotel, a stately brick edifice topped with a head-turning mansard roof, the similarities between the man and his property quickly come into focus.

Photo Galleries

For starters, both are well-known in this town of 7,600 — the Aethelwold, because of its prominent location facing the historic Transylvania County Courthouse and its claim to being the last remaining hotel property within city limits; and Hall, who is almost always sprinkled with a bit of sawdust and hard to miss with a shock of white hair, because he has owned, worked on or salvaged parts from nearly every downtown property built before World War II.

Stand with him for 10 minutes in front of the Aethelwold and watch him struggle to finish a single sentence without someone honking or hollering at him. The man is well-known, and almost everyone passes the Aethelwold at least twice a day.

Once inside, Hall has stories to tell, and so does the former hotel — from presidential visits to carpet-covered “modernizations” — if only these walls could talk.

Since 1993, when Hall and his wife and business partner, Nancy, purchased the roughly 25,000-square-foot former hotel, Hall has been working to “accurately recreate” this 114-year-old building to its past grandeur and dust off its nearly forgotten stories. He freely admits that he has always had a soft spot for this property.

“The roof was terrible. When I first bought it, the third floor was the roof, and it leaked all over. I remember on hurricane-like days, setting my alarm for the middle of the night, and I would be down here emptying dozens of buckets, because they would be full from when I had set them out the evening before,” he says shaking his head in mild embarrassment. “I have babied this building for a long time.”

While surviving the economic downturn by selling a few other properties, but never the Aethelwold, Hall completed the retail spaces at street level and the entire facade of the hotel by 2008. He reconstructed the mansard roof, which had been shaved off in 1960, a decade after the hotel closed its doors to guests.

An elderly local man, who had once worked at the hotel, told Hall that the building's name was “spread out on the sidewalk somewhere.” When Hall poked around the former lobby's carpet-covered stoop, he found an artfully laid-out mosaic spelling out the hotel's easy-to-butcher name, which Hall has been told was a combination of the first owner's wife's name and the name of an English saint.

Once he had pulled enough of the glued-down carpet off, Hall found the entire lobby featured a mosaic tile floor — each tile hardly one square inch in size. It took weeks on knees with pocket knives to scrape calcified glue and carpet fibers out of the grout, Hall remembers.

The lobby is now grand with a 13-foot-high ceiling and a majestic wood staircase. A glass showcase in the lobby shows off remnants of the hotel's illustrious past. There is a room key, a platter with the hotel's insignia and a hand-written guest register, signed by former U.S. President William Howard Taft, who stayed in the bridal suite at “no charge,” according to the desk clerk's notation.

By 2008, Hall had filled the street level with retail tenants, but then he hit a log jam.

“I couldn't make it work without the parking. Parking became the central issue, so we decided to wait for the right time. So I was just sitting here with my shell of a building,” Hall remembers.

After three years of waiting, Michael Domokur, a successful architect and developer, was made aware of Hall's plight and his attachment to the property.

“I immediately recognized that Tim had poured his heart and soul into it and that without parking he wasn't going anywhere with it,” says Domokur, a native of Ohio, who maintains a residence in Transylvania County.

“It is right there for everyone to see, and I wanted to see what it would take to develop it into something instead of it sitting empty,” he says.

Domokur, whose company, Domokur Architects, has offices in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, and Chicago and now in Brevard, moved swiftly and purchased the adjacent vacant lot and in due time forged a partnership with Hall to develop the Aethelwold's upper two stories into residential condominiums and commercial spaces.

During an open house in April, six of 12 proposed units were reserved by invited guests, who will likely pay $180 per square foot for their finished piece of the historic Aethelwold.

“The views are what capture you like nothing else,” Domokur says of the building's upper level appeal.

Along with 360-degree views, the second floor also features original exposed brick walls. If all goes according to an ambitious construction schedule and permits are issued for dedicated, underground parking on the adjacent lot and for an elevator that will be attached to the outside of the building's south facade, the first tenants could move in as early as September, Domokur says.

While Hall will oversee the interior development of the building, Domokur is busy gathering support for an outside plaza atop the underground parking and another mixed-use building at the corner of Broad and Jordan streets.

“We are looking for more input from the community on an outside plaza and the general potential of that adjacent site,” Domokur says. He has also purchased two buildings along East Main Street, which he plans to develop to complement upper-story residential living at the Aethelwold and elsewhere in downtown Brevard.

Heath Seymour, executive director with the Heart of Brevard, a group of downtown merchants and business owners, says upper-story living is the newest trend thought to ensure vibrancy in small-town centers.

“It helps keep a real sustainable mix of business downtown,” Seymour says. “The first step for us is to make sure that everything at street level is filled up and there is a good variety. Then the next move is to fill those upper levels and make it so the downtown is where people want to live and be.”

If the Aethelwold becomes home to full-time and part-time residents and a few businesses, Hall says, he will be happy to be just a visitor. He has plans to renovate a space above his own business, an antique mall and building salvage business on East Main Street, and eventually make it a home for himself and his wife.

“Not many people were crazy enough to hang in there with me,” he says. ”It will be satisfying to me and my wife if we can help the center of town.”

After all, Hall says, the Aethelwold was headed toward demolition and could have been lost forever to downtown Brevard.

“It was just so awful. It was really beat up,” Hall says with a proud smile as he gingerly makes his way down the polished stairs into the lobby, taking care not to further aggravate a creaky knee.

Geraldine Dinkins is a freelance writer based in Brevard. She can be reached at geraldinedinkins@gmail.com.

<p>BREVARD -- When Brevard business owner Tim Hall stands in front of the Aethelwold Hotel, a stately brick edifice topped with a head-turning mansard roof, the similarities between the man and his property quickly come into focus.</p><p>For starters, both are well-known in this town of 7,600 — the Aethelwold, because of its prominent location facing the historic Transylvania County Courthouse and its claim to being the last remaining hotel property within city limits; and Hall, who is almost always sprinkled with a bit of sawdust and hard to miss with a shock of white hair, because he has owned, worked on or salvaged parts from nearly every downtown property built before World War II.</p><p>Stand with him for 10 minutes in front of the Aethelwold and watch him struggle to finish a single sentence without someone honking or hollering at him. The man is well-known, and almost everyone passes the Aethelwold at least twice a day.</p><p>Once inside, Hall has stories to tell, and so does the former hotel — from presidential visits to carpet-covered “modernizations” — if only these walls could talk.</p><p>Since 1993, when Hall and his wife and business partner, Nancy, purchased the roughly 25,000-square-foot former hotel, Hall has been working to “accurately recreate” this 114-year-old building to its past grandeur and dust off its nearly forgotten stories. He freely admits that he has always had a soft spot for this property.</p><p>“The roof was terrible. When I first bought it, the third floor was the roof, and it leaked all over. I remember on hurricane-like days, setting my alarm for the middle of the night, and I would be down here emptying dozens of buckets, because they would be full from when I had set them out the evening before,” he says shaking his head in mild embarrassment. “I have babied this building for a long time.”</p><p>While surviving the economic downturn by selling a few other properties, but never the Aethelwold, Hall completed the retail spaces at street level and the entire facade of the hotel by 2008. He reconstructed the mansard roof, which had been shaved off in 1960, a decade after the hotel closed its doors to guests.</p><p>An elderly local man, who had once worked at the hotel, told Hall that the building's name was “spread out on the sidewalk somewhere.” When Hall poked around the former lobby's carpet-covered stoop, he found an artfully laid-out mosaic spelling out the hotel's easy-to-butcher name, which Hall has been told was a combination of the first owner's wife's name and the name of an English saint.</p><p>Once he had pulled enough of the glued-down carpet off, Hall found the entire lobby featured a mosaic tile floor — each tile hardly one square inch in size. It took weeks on knees with pocket knives to scrape calcified glue and carpet fibers out of the grout, Hall remembers.</p><p>The lobby is now grand with a 13-foot-high ceiling and a majestic wood staircase. A glass showcase in the lobby shows off remnants of the hotel's illustrious past. There is a room key, a platter with the hotel's insignia and a hand-written guest register, signed by former U.S. President William Howard Taft, who stayed in the bridal suite at “no charge,” according to the desk clerk's notation.</p><p>By 2008, Hall had filled the street level with retail tenants, but then he hit a log jam.</p><p>“I couldn't make it work without the parking. Parking became the central issue, so we decided to wait for the right time. So I was just sitting here with my shell of a building,” Hall remembers.</p><p>After three years of waiting, Michael Domokur, a successful architect and developer, was made aware of Hall's plight and his attachment to the property.</p><p>“I immediately recognized that Tim had poured his heart and soul into it and that without parking he wasn't going anywhere with it,” says Domokur, a native of Ohio, who maintains a residence in Transylvania County.</p><p>“It is right there for everyone to see, and I wanted to see what it would take to develop it into something instead of it sitting empty,” he says.</p><p>Domokur, whose company, Domokur Architects, has offices in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, and Chicago and now in Brevard, moved swiftly and purchased the adjacent vacant lot and in due time forged a partnership with Hall to develop the Aethelwold's upper two stories into residential condominiums and commercial spaces.</p><p>During an open house in April, six of 12 proposed units were reserved by invited guests, who will likely pay $180 per square foot for their finished piece of the historic Aethelwold.</p><p>“The views are what capture you like nothing else,” Domokur says of the building's upper level appeal.</p><p>Along with 360-degree views, the second floor also features original exposed brick walls. If all goes according to an ambitious construction schedule and permits are issued for dedicated, underground parking on the adjacent lot and for an elevator that will be attached to the outside of the building's south facade, the first tenants could move in as early as September, Domokur says.</p><p>While Hall will oversee the interior development of the building, Domokur is busy gathering support for an outside plaza atop the underground parking and another mixed-use building at the corner of Broad and Jordan streets.</p><p>“We are looking for more input from the community on an outside plaza and the general potential of that adjacent site,” Domokur says. He has also purchased two buildings along East Main Street, which he plans to develop to complement upper-story residential living at the Aethelwold and elsewhere in downtown Brevard.</p><p>Heath Seymour, executive director with the Heart of Brevard, a group of downtown merchants and business owners, says upper-story living is the newest trend thought to ensure vibrancy in small-town centers.</p><p>“It helps keep a real sustainable mix of business downtown,” Seymour says. “The first step for us is to make sure that everything at street level is filled up and there is a good variety. Then the next move is to fill those upper levels and make it so the downtown is where people want to live and be.”</p><p>If the Aethelwold becomes home to full-time and part-time residents and a few businesses, Hall says, he will be happy to be just a visitor. He has plans to renovate a space above his own business, an antique mall and building salvage business on East Main Street, and eventually make it a home for himself and his wife.</p><p>“Not many people were crazy enough to hang in there with me,” he says. ”It will be satisfying to me and my wife if we can help the center of town.”</p><p>After all, Hall says, the Aethelwold was headed toward demolition and could have been lost forever to downtown Brevard.</p><p>“It was just so awful. It was really beat up,” Hall says with a proud smile as he gingerly makes his way down the polished stairs into the lobby, taking care not to further aggravate a creaky knee.</p><p><b>Geraldine Dinkins is a freelance writer based in Brevard. She can be reached at geraldinedinkins@gmail.com.</p>